The DMX X server (Xdmx) is a proxy server that is designed to allow X servers on multiple machines to be combined into a single multi-headed X server. Combined with Xinerama, these heads can appear as a single very high-resolution screen. Typical applications include the creation of a video wall with 16 1280x1024 displays arranged in a rectangle, for a total resolution of of 5120x4096.
Applications displayed on a physically large video wall that provides high pixel-resolution may be difficult to see, especially if the application is designed for use on a typical desktop computer with a relatively small display located close to the human operator. The goal of this paper is to describe and discuss solutions to this problem.
The original driving problem for this work is to provide
scaling for the vncviewer application when
displayed using DMX (VNC scaling is currently available only
with the Windows client, and there is no plan to extend that
capability to other clients). While this specific problem
will be addressed in this paper, the general solution space
will also be explored, since this may lead to a good
solution not only for vncviewer but also for
other applications.
For reference, here is the original description of the task this paper addresses: